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I got out of a chair today and three bones creaked louder than the chair, so.........

Can someone tell me when I grew so old?The carriage ride of life went oh, so fast.My youthful hopes, my dreams have grown cold...can someone tell me when I grew so old?With pen in hand the stories must be toldbefore the carriage robs me of my past.Can someone tell me when I grew so old?The carriage ride of life went oh, so fast.

I had something really memorable to write here but I forgot what it was.
Gerald Shuler

I think I'm starting to understand the process of writing a poem. First I found an image, then I looked for a deeper meaning. Then I wrote the first two lines and scanned them. Then I looked for rhymes. Then I tried to get the message into a phrase that ended with the right rhyme. Then I played with words until I was satisfied I had the meter, rhymes and message. Wow. I admire all of you real poets who do it so well.

Digging treasure in back yards
What will little pirates find?
Precious trinkets no one guards
Digging treasure in back yards
Next a pearl no one discards
Buried deep, in Word confined
Digging treasure in back yards
What will little pirates find?

I deliberately didn't punctuate so Next could be part of the previous line or the beginning of a new sentence. Is that okay?

"And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise." Philippians 4:8 NLT

Phee, think of writing a poem as building a rock wall or doing a mosaic. You have all these pieces (words), you sort through them to find just the right shape and color. You rearrange them until they are just the way you like them.

This is another poetic form I'd never heard of, though I can think of other poems that use that sort of repetition. It seems to me that this form lends itself to reflective/melancholy poetry... though others (most notably Steve!!) have already proven that isn't always the case.

Maybe I'm just in melancholy mode at the moment, since I was quite sick last week and missed a concert I was really looking forward to singing. So with that in mind...

The music goes on when we are not there
And others take our places on the stage.
The faces change beneath the stage-lights’ glare;
The music goes on when we are not there.

Ghost voices do not linger on the air
When we are banished by our choice, or age;
The music goes on when we are not there
And others take our places on the stage.

Symphonic wrote:This is another poetic form I'd never heard of, though I can think of other poems that use that sort of repetition. It seems to me that this form lends itself to reflective/melancholy poetry... though others (most notably Steve!!) have already proven that isn't always the case.

Maybe I'm just in melancholy mode at the moment, since I was quite sick last week and missed a concert I was really looking forward to singing. So with that in mind...

The music goes on when we are not thereAnd others take our places on the stage.The faces change beneath the stage-lights’ glare;The music goes on when we are not there.

Ghost voices do not linger on the airWhen we are banished by our choice, or age;The music goes on when we are not thereAnd others take our places on the stage.

Carol S.

Aw Carol, I'm sorry you missed your concert, and that you were sick! I hope you're much better now. Your writing skills don't seem to have suffered any; this is sad and tender and wistful--beautifully written!

yvonne wrote:Phee, think of writing a poem as building a rock wall or doing a mosaic. You have all these pieces (words), you sort through them to find just the right shape and color. You rearrange them until they are just the way you like them.

Thanks, Vonnie. I'm starting to see that. My problem is that I don't think I have very many pieces to work with. I just can't think of the right words. I'm growing, though.

"And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise." Philippians 4:8 NLT

I'm not sure I've even come close to grasping all the spiritual and emotional remifications. I'll have to mull it over for a while.

Okay, done mulling.

symphonic wrote:It seems to me that this form lends itself to reflective/melancholy poetry... though others (most notably Steve!!) have already proven that isn't always the case.

OK, OK!

A Mother’s Streamside Musing

A leaf floating, stuck upon an eddy,
Turning, spinning, willing to break away.
Is it? Can it? Am I like it or it me?
A leaf floating, stuck upon an eddy
Represents my life. Where can I find me?
Kids to school, games, friends, practice, ev’ry day.
A leaf floating, stuck upon an eddy.
Turning. Spinning. Willing to break away?

2 things: 1. Not about my mother or my wife. 2. Who controls the meaning, the writer or the reader? He, he, he, here we go again! Did you take “willing” to mean “agreeable” or “exerting the will” or one of each?

Steve
nlf.net
________
"When the Round Table is broken every man must follow Galahad or Mordred; middle
things are gone." C.S. Lewis
“The chief purpose of life … is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis ... We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendor.” J.R.R. Tolkien

And as to your bigger question--I'd love to have a discussion on that. I think poetry (and anything we write, really) belongs to the reader, as soon as we put it out there to be read. I can't tell you how many times people have commented on the meaning they found in something I wrote--that I never intended to put there. But if someone found it there--who am I to say that it's NOT there?

swfdoc1 wrote: Did you take “willing” to mean “agreeable” or “exerting the will” or one of each?

glorybee wrote:One of each, I think.

Any other takers before I reveal the answer?

glorybee wrote:And as to your bigger question--I'd love to have a discussion on that. I think poetry (and anything we write, really) belongs to the reader, as soon as we put it out there to be read. I can't tell you how many times people have commented on the meaning they found in something I wrote--that I never intended to put there. But if someone found it there--who am I to say that it's NOT there?

Don't you mean have a discussion on that AGAIN? Have we forgotten so quickly?

swfdoc1 wrote:No James Whitcomb Riley on my reading list this week. Just some Ackerson. I am working on an essay on her classic piece, Sniggles. I read an interview with the author once in which she said that 75% of it was based on actual experiences that she had working as the secretary for a dyslexic pastor, that this was just a light-hearted piece. But we need not be blind to the obvious anti-ecclesiastical message. The pastor, representing the Church itself, is bumbling, disorganized. The Church gets things backwards and confused. Yet it cannot resist meddling in the lives of people. The secretary, of course, represents those countless millions of fools who waste their lives in service to the bumbling Church. And what a brilliant parting shot at the end. The thinly veiled allusion to a soon-coming sexual tryst between Susie Fields and Jim Bradford, a tryst that, to use that horrid ecclesiastical term, would be viewed as “sin” by the Church. BUT, what a stroke of genesis to name him Bradford, in an obvious call-back to the Puritan William Bradford. Here we clearly see an attack on the hypocrisy of the Puritans’, and hence all of Christendom’s, sexual mores. Nor has it escaped us that Bradford is a TWIN. Here Ackerson is at her exquisite best. Yes, yes, the Church is guilty of twin crimes. One is clearly the hypocrisy just noted. But what is the other crime? Ackerson doesn’t tell us. She doesn’t WANT to tell us. For me, it could be its materialism. For you, it could be its self-absorption. For the next reader, it could its suffocating regulations of its members’ lives. Brilliant! We know the Church is criminal, yet Ackerson feels no need to compel us to concentrate on just one of its innumerable flaws. No, we are free to loathe the Church as we will. What a master!

Steve
nlf.net
________
"When the Round Table is broken every man must follow Galahad or Mordred; middle
things are gone." C.S. Lewis
“The chief purpose of life … is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis ... We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendor.” J.R.R. Tolkien

glorybee wrote: I can't tell you how many times people have commented on the meaning they found in something I wrote--that I never intended to put there. But if someone found it there--who am I to say that it's NOT there?

I think a lot of our subconscious thoughts come through in our writing. I think even the objects and images we use are often symbolic of our attitudes, whether we realize it or not. I've gone back and read something that I thought was trivial when I wrote it, and I've seen the emotions I was dealing with at that time.